Tring to change the "From" address

[Ropeguru]

Hi all,

I am posting this here as it is an issue for me with SWA and the Outlook connector. I had posted in the SWA forum before about the need to change the "From" address when sending emails for different aliases I use for certain list groups. I was told about the location under options where I could change my "from/reply to" email address. However, this only changes the reply-to header not the "from" header in which most all list servers get their authentication from.

Second, under Outlook, I have in the past been able to change the "From" address by just putting in the email address from one of my aliases when using other mail servers. ie. Communigate Pro and Exchange Under Scalis I keep getting the error "An unexpected error occurred. Reasons for the failure are unknown." It would be nice to have the availability to chnge the "From" address properly so I can again send email to certain lists I belong to.

Thanks,
Robert Webb

[jlecomte]

Ropeguru,

The From: header is used internally in our system (in conjunction with the Sender: header) for cases of delegation by both SWA and Outlook, which is why you can't change it. If you could change it, it would mean that you could send an email that would appear to be coming from somebody else... Not great!

You can change your display name and reply to address. This should be sufficient.

If I may ask, why do you absolutely need to change your From: address?

[Ropeguru]

I belong to several different list servers and have used an email address other than my main email address. When I try to send an email to the list, it is rejected because it is not the email address I subscribed with.

Under outlook using exchange or CommunGate Pro connector with CGP, in outlook I could bring up the option when sending an email to change the from address to one of my aliases and send the email to the list and it would go through fine. That would happen even though I was logged in as my main email address. When trying to do that through the Scalix connector, I get the unknown error I posted above.

Under SWA when I go into the options and change the reply-to email address, the lists I belong to reject the email I am send because list servers look at the From header and not the reply-to header.

AS it stands right now with using Scalix, I will have to create a seperate user for each alias and log in as that user just to send an email to a moderated list group.

See below for info I get when the list holds my message for moderator approval:

Sender: rwebb@ropeguru.com
Subject: Sorry for the test.
Reason: Post by non-member to a members-only list

[Ropeguru]

Anyone else have any thoughts on this??? If I can not figure this out I will probably have to revert to some other server.

[florian]

As far as I know, you can't do this with Outlook and Exchange as well.

I've tried this on Ex2K3 and it would allow you to type one of the alternate email addresses in the from field, however, when the message left the system, it was marked with the accounts primary address, i.e. the one marked as bold in the addresses configuration...

-- Florian.

[PaulHerron]

I too am interested in the ability to set-up alias sending.

Prior to Scalix, I set up an alias scheme with an Outlook profile storing messages locally and setting up multiple POP3 mailboxes... the idea is to have one mailbox repository for all incoming mail and be able to reply to or originate e-mail with the appropriate alias as necessary. Where this is useful is consulting situations where the client/employer wants e-mail to come from their domain address. For example:

mail-user@consultant.com is the Scalix address but, the consultant has e-mail boxes at several different clients, each of which forward to the Scalix mailbox. Each client of the consultant wants mail sent on their behalf from their consultant to look like it came from their own domain (not that of the consultant).

Inbound looks like:
mail-user@client.com (fwd to)==> mail-user@consultant.com (Scalix Server)
mail-user@anotherclient.com (fwd to)==> mail-user@consultant.com (Scalix Server)
mail-user@yetanotherclient.com (fwd to)==> mail-user@consultant.com (Scalix Server)


Outbound looks like:
Mail is composed in Scalix but appears that it came from ==>
mail-user@client.com, or
mail-user@anotherclient.com, or
mail-user@yetanotherclient.com
(based on the alias selected when the e-mail was sent)

The benefits of this capability are obvious... the ability to operate and monitor a single mailbox vs. having to monitor multiple mailboxes.

I will dig for ideas on how this may be accomplished but would appreciate any ideas anyone might have.

[florian]

Hi Paul,

unfortunately, to our best knowledge, the inability to set the SMTP sender address is actually an Outlook issue.

You're quoting Outlook yourself, but you've been running it in POP/IMAP (i.e. Internet) mode. In that mode, selecting multiple send-as account is possible.

Unfortunately, Outlook running in MAPI/Workgroup mode doesn't have that option.

We're still looking it because the feature would have pretty wide appeal - it has been asked for a couple times, but sometimes we're limited by the client's capabilities....

Cheers,
Florian.

[Ropeguru]

So I have a question....


If it is not possible to use the From address line in Outlook because of a client limitation, then how are all these people out there using aliases for list groups that require subscription??

With Outlook and Exchange, there is the option to use the From line if you have permission to send email on behalf of the user you put in the from lsiting. Would it be that difficult, I am not a programmer so please take this as a real question, to match the From address to the aliases assigned to the user or allow it to match to other user accounts?

[florian]

Hi Ropeguru,

on your first question, the honest answer is - I don't know. Some might use their real/primary email address, some might use a webmail address, some list services might activate their subscription through a http link sent by email and not by reply, so it wouldn't matter and some might work completely different.

My own current experience with this is pretty limited; I stopped subscribing to mailing lists a long time ago, just because of the sheer volume of traffic that hits me from those.... :-(

On your second one....
1) when you put something into the outlook from field, it will first resolve this to a user record in the directory. the search will look for primary email addresses and aliases alike.
2) exchange - or scalix - will then check if you're allowed to send as this user (the check is send-as-this-user, NOT send under-this-name). This check will be true, if (a) it has been one of YOUR own aliases, so the user equals the person logged in or (b) if you have delegate access rights to the users mailbox (send on behalf)
3) The from record in the email submitted to the Scalix or Exchange MTA (in Scalix, it's called the Service Router) will NOT contain the alias anymore. indeed, the Scalix-format (X.400) or Exchange-Format (also some X.400) FROM address will be used.
4) when sending to the internet, the outgoing internet mail gateway will then render the internal message into a RFC-compliant MIME message; doing so, the From address will be set - by the gateway - to the primary SMTP address of the user.

Because of these address conversions that messages undergo for both Exchange and Scalix, it is not possible for the server to preserve the email address selected by the client, because it actually never sees it.

you can enable a user to send under a different name using the on-behalf feature that both scalix and exchange provide. however, this requires a second mailbox and setup of access rights between the two, so it is a rather cumbersome and complex setup.

hope this helps anyway,
Florian.[/list]

[Ropeguru]

Florian,

Thanks for the reply and information. I guess maybe I was just spoiled with the CommuniGatePro MAPI connector as it would allow for the changing of the From address through outlook and I could change the From address from the web based email. I guess they must be breaking RFC rules in order to do this from what I have been understanding.

Robert

[florian]

Hi Robert,

don't know how they work; maybe they are not really using MAPI, but instead a IMAP based approach (do they have a PST file on the local machine?) as that would allow for it.

We would probably be able to do this in our webclient, but we're hesitant to implement a solution that works differently for different clients, especially all differences between Outlook and SWA is something we're trying to avoid.

No RFC confiormance stuff here; it's really a Outlook/MAPI-Primary-Storage-Provider thing....

-- f.

[PaulHerron]

Florian,

Thanks for your quick replies on this subject. They have been really helpful.

Here's a question about a possible alternative solution... it has to do with IMAP... as I've never used IMAP in personal instalations (and accept my appologies for not Googling it before this post) so I don't know if it is a valid approach:

I gather from various posts in this and other forums that IMAP-based clients are able to view/maintain the mailbox folder structure of the Scalix server. If this is the case and, the user doesn't require group scheduling and some of the other features of the Scalix MAPI connector, could I set-up the client (MS Outlook in this case) to use an IMAP connection to Scalix (for retrieving and filing messages) but then, also set up several POP3 accounts on the client that connect directly to the SendMail server for sending outgoing messages under different names/aliases? Redirects for incoming mail would still point to Scalix to make retrieving and filing messages uniform and accessible via SWA.

Of course, there are trade-offs to this approach... losing some of the Groupware features of Scalix but, there would be the ability to send under aliases, a central repository and filing structure, and the ability to access mail from SWA (although without the send under different aliases capability).

Do you think that this would work? Any possible drawbacks that I am missing? Of course I'll have to see whether IMAP and POP3 play well together in MS Outlook.

Thanks!
Paul

[florian]

Hi Paul,

thanks for your further feedback on this topic.

In principle, what you're suggesting would change the situation a little bit. It is possible to setup multiple accounts with Outlook running in Internet mode and you can choose which of the accounts would be used for sending; this would also setup the MIME headers of the generated message accordingly.

However, there is a catch. In a default Scalix setup, Scalix SMTPD would be listening on port 25, which is used to submit messages from outlook. Therefore, the message flow, also for messages finally destined for internet recipients, would be as follows:

Client -- SMTP --> Scalix SMTPD --> Scalix Incoming Internet GW --> Scalix Service Router --> Scalix Outgoing Internet GW --> sendmail -- SMTP --> Internet recipient

The reason for moving all messages through this chain is that we want a central place through which ALL messages pass - for auditing, archiving, virus scanning, etc. This place is the Scalix Service Router - effectively our internal MTA.

However, the Router does not work with MIME messages directly, so the Incoming and Outgoing Internet GWs convert the message from/to MIME to/from Scalix message format.

During this conversion, addresses known to the system (because the users are local) are rewritten to be X.400 style adresses and back to SMTP addresses.

When they are written back (outgoing IGW), again, the primary address is used; so the chain described would still "normalize" the sender address; in many environments this is actually wanted - I understand that in your (and Robert's) case it is not.

Now, the only way to change this would be to have Sendmail listen externally and bypass the Scalix routing chain for those messages, i.e. having your Outlook client taling directly to sendmail. This is possible, however due to the further loss of functionality (centralized control), I would not recommend for it.

In addition, the obvious loss of functionality within Outlook (because you're now using a simple POP/IMAP connection instead of deep MAPI integration) would still happen, so you'd lose a lot.

What particular use case do you need this set-sender-address functionality for?

Thanks,
Florian.

[PaulHerron]

Thanks Florian!

I did a little experiment with Outlook and my idea in practice doesn't work very well for the very reasons you outline above. Bypassing the local SMTP server for another SMTP server doesn't help matters either.

My need for aliases stem from a user who consults in two completely and unrelated industries -- higher education loan default prevention and outdoor environmental education for a private school. Each organization has established an e-mail address that forwards to her POP3 mailbox (they prefer to use these addresses as they are intuitive to their constituency -- private career college clients in one case and parents of students attending the private school in the other. Replies to either of the constituencies using an e-mail address other than that of the appropriate organization creates confusion among clients or parents and therefore, isn't desireable (not to mention that she has complete different signature lines including phone and fax information for each address). Hence the need.

There may not be a reliable solution to this problem and, we may just continue to support this user with a POP3 configuration.

Thank you for your help!

Paul

[Ropeguru]

Florian,

I woul dlike to thank you again for the time and effort you have put into explaining everything. I went out and did some reading on the CommuniGate Pro MAPI connector. It seems you are indeed correct that it is using IMAP for its messaging.

The CommuniGate Pro MAPI Connector acts as a "MAPI provider". It accepts Messaging API requests from Microsoft Outlook (Outlook 98, Outlook 2000, Outlook 2002, Outlook XP and later) running in the "groupware" mode, and from other Windows applications. The MAPI Connector converts these requests into extended IMAP commands and sends them to the CommuniGate Pro Server.

If you are interested in learning more about their MAPI conenctor then chek out this link:

http://www.communigate.com/CommuniGatePro/MAPI.html